[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 106 (Tuesday, July 23, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5832-S5834]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          THUD APPROPRIATIONS

  Mr. CASEY. Madam President, I rise today to talk about legislation we 
are currently considering, and it is a welcome development that we are 
actually working on appropriations bills on the Senate floor. I want to 
commend the work of Chairwoman Mikulski of the Appropriations 
Committee, her ranking member Senator Shelby, as well as both Chairman 
Murray and Ranking Member Collins on the so-called THUD bill. 
Everything in Washington has an acronym. So it is with this, the 
Transportation, Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill.
  As many people know, when you consider those appropriations and you 
consider the subject matter, it is pretty broad and diverse. I will 
just give maybe a five-part summation here of what we are talking 
about. It means investing, of course, in transportation infrastructure; 
providing housing and services to very vulnerable Americans; supporting 
our communities and addressing the foreclosure crisis, which is still 
with us in so many ways, as the Presiding Officer knows so well and has 
worked so hard on over many years; ensuring the safety of our 
transportation system; and then, No. 5, promoting sustainability in our 
communities.
  I want to talk first about Amtrak. Amtrak is part of our 
transportation infrastructure that not only is critically important for 
a State such as Pennsylvania but really the entire eastern seaboard and 
really across the whole country. It is one of the reasons we can move 
not just people but goods and services with the transactions that occur 
when people are able to get from one place to another.
  The Senate bill we are considering includes almost $1.5 billion for 
Amtrak, preserving the Federal commitments to provide safe, reliable, 
and energy-efficient passenger rail transportation for more than 31 
million travelers--and that is an annual number--plus an additional 235 
million commuter trips that depend upon Amtrak and its infrastructure 
along the Northeast corridor.
  Unfortunately, the House bill guts funding for Amtrak, cutting the 
appropriation by a third--$465 million below the fiscal year 2013 
enacted level. This is the lowest level of funding in over a decade. It 
makes no sense in a lot of ways to try to find savings in a bill like 
this at such an extreme level. It makes no sense at all in terms of our 
economy.
  Due to contract and debt service payment commitments, this would mean 
Amtrak only has $100 million for capital investments. The Northeast 
corridor alone needs $782 million per year to address longstanding 
state of good repair projects, so not even one-seventh of the dollars 
we need for state of good repair projects. This is not just a nice 
thing to do every year. You have to fix the infrastructure if you are 
running a transportation system and especially if you are running 
Amtrak.
  So that is not only a safety issue, but it is a jobs issue. You could 
put at risk some 10,000 jobs and possibly eliminate some existing 
Amtrak routes.
  In 2012 over 6.1 million Amtrak passengers traveled at Pennsylvania 
stations, and this number is expected to increase in 2013. Ridership 
has continued to grow over the past several years. It reached an 
alltime high last year and is on track to break that record in 2013.
  I was just talking to folks at Amtrak today, and they talked about 
the tremendous growth in ridership. That is good for a lot of reasons. 
It is not just nice for Amtrak. Most importantly, it is good for our 
environment, with fewer people driving cars that have an impact on air 
emissions. It is also probably a great stress-reliever for people. 
Driving and working is a challenge, getting from one place to another. 
Riding on a train can allow you to do work and maybe allow you to be 
more rested, and it probably cuts down on traffic fatalities, although 
I do not have a study that backs that up.
  But there is no question that we want to make sure we make these 
investments in Amtrak, and I hope we can ultimately get a bipartisan 
agreement and have some of the features of bipartisanship we have seen 
here in the Senate.
  We also know that Amtrak, just from a Pennsylvania perspective, is a 
job creator. It employs over 2,600 Pennsylvanians, and these jobs could 
be in jeopardy if these cuts are maintained.
  The other aspect--and I will end with this on Amtrak--are the 
suppliers who are affected. And, of course, that is a big jobs issue as 
well.
  Let me move to the second part of my remarks today about this very 
important appropriations bill, and that has another acronym: CDBG, 
community development block grants. A lot of people might know this 
acronym better than THUD--the Transportation, Housing and Urban 
Development bill.
  The Community Development Block Grant Program is so important for a 
variety of reasons. One of the most important reasons we should focus 
on it is that it is one of the few remaining Federal programs where the 
Federal Government says to local governments: Here are some resources. 
These are taxpayer resources, so you have to safeguard them and spend 
them wisely, but we are giving you these Federal funds so you can make 
a decision about what is best for your community.
  That is what community development block grants are all about. There 
is not a one-size-fits-all Federal-Washington-way to spend these 
dollars.

[[Page S5833]]

That is why I cannot understand why some people here want to make the 
kinds of dangerous cuts to these block grants that some want to make.
  We know the Senate bill includes a little more than $3.15 billion for 
these block grants--less than the 2013 bill, but it is $352 million 
more than the President asked for this year--``this year'' meaning 
2014. According to calculations by HUD, the funding level provided in 
the Senate bill will support an estimated 80,900 jobs--twice the level 
in the House bill--80,900 jobs. That is a good reason to support the 
Senate bill. That is not the only reason standing alone, but that is a 
big jobs number. The House bill contains the lowest amount ever 
provided to the program.
  I wish we could stand and say: You know what, communities across the 
country do not need block grants. They do not need to even decide what 
is best for the community because all of the problems are taken care 
of. Everything is wonderful. All of those communities are in perfect 
shape, so let's just have a big cut to the program.
  That would be an interesting scenario if it were true. The reality is 
that in a lot of communities they have had to deal with the ravages of 
a foreclosure crisis where the greatest number of Americans ever 
probably lost their homes--maybe the highest number since the 1930s, 
No. 1. No. 2, they had to deal with the jobs crisis in addition to the 
foreclosure crisis. Of course the two are closely related. We just went 
below half a million people out of work in Pennsylvania, but we are 
still at about 490,000 people out of work.
  So these communities that have had to deal with several avalanches of 
problems--foreclosure crisis, jobs crisis, and then all of the results 
of both of these, all of the trauma that has been heaped on these 
communities, now we are told by some in Washington: Your problems are 
solved. You do not need any grant funding from the Federal Government 
to help you decide what is best for your community, whether you are 
going to use it for foreclosure mitigation or whether you are going to 
use it for job creation, whether you are going to use that limited 
resource from the Federal Government to bring a company into your town.
  You are being told that, in essence, by implication, you do not need 
that. That is really an insult to local communities across the country.
  We know that the block grant program began in 1975. In its first year 
it was funded at a $2.47 billion number. Why do I give that specific 
number from the 1970s? Well, up until now that is the lowest amount it 
has ever received but still $837 million more than the level provided 
by the House bill. So what the House is doing here is setting records 
they should not want to set to be in a race to see who can in a more 
devastating fashion almost decapitate the block grant program.
  Since the program started, the number of grantees has doubled, making 
the impact of the cuts even greater on communities. These community 
development block grants allow 47 Pennsylvania communities to address 
local needs. They get to decide, not the Federal Government. They get 
the resources, and they decide at the local level. We know that 
countless communities have received these funds.
  These funds have also been made available to State governments. 
Municipalities depend on this funding for economic development 
projects, which I mentioned before. To give you some examples of 
individual cities, the city of Philadelphia, which has had an 
unemployment rate at 10 percent or above for as long as anyone can 
remember--we are into several years now where the unemployment rate has 
been 10 or higher, meaning that between 60,000 and 70,000 or more 
people have been out of work in that city. CDBG funding in Philadelphia 
was used to stem the foreclosure crisis, helping nearly 4,000 
homeowners avoid foreclosure through housing counseling, funded by the 
Community Development Block Grant Program. Prior to the funding cuts, 
these grants provided annually enough resources that 2,818 jobs were 
created. Now, in a city that has had 60,000 to 70,000 people out of 
work consistently for several years, 2,818 jobs is a lot of jobs. 
Philadelphia is a big city, but that is still a lot of jobs that are 
directly a result of community development block grant funding.
  That is why you hear from mayors that are Democrats and Republicans 
and Independents. Whatever their party, they all seem to come together 
on these block grant funds because they know they are better judges of 
what is best for their communities.
  The City of Philadelphia developed its own foreclosure mitigation 
program. They developed the program. They came up with the idea, 
implemented it, and then used Federal money to support it. Yet you have 
some people in Washington saying: Do not worry about it. You do not 
need those funds. We are going to decide what the priorities in your 
town are.

  That is really what they are saying. They may not want to hear this, 
but that is what you are saying when you tell someone: We are going to 
drastically cut funding for a successful grant program that has funded 
projects that you have decided are important or that you may have even 
created, in the case of this foreclosure mitigation program.
  In essence, what they are saying is not just that we are going--that 
the House or the Senate or any part of our government is going to cut 
this program dramatically. They are making the decision for those local 
communities. So all of those folks in Washington who talk about local 
decisionmaking and then gut the program have their credibility 
dramatically undermined.
  I will give a few more examples before I wrap up. The City of 
Pittsburgh directed some of its grant dollars to promote home ownership 
and affordable housing. That is our second largest city using these 
grant funds in a way that was most important to them. The Lehigh 
Valley, which is the eastern seaboard of our State, just north of 
Philadelphia--cities such as Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton, those 
communities--used the funds to encourage private sector investment. So 
they made a decision in their communities that we are not going to use 
these funds for foreclosure mitigation or housing, we are going to 
focus on job creation. We are going to focus on getting private sector 
businesses to locate in the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania. They made 
that decision, not us. They made that decision. Some people in the 
House think they should substitute their judgment for the people of the 
Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania. I think that is a mistake.
  In Lancaster and York Counties down in the southern border of our 
State, a portion of these grant funds was used to reduce blight and 
revitalize historic downtowns. Again, they made that decision. They 
have used these dollars for that.
  None of those communities are saying these dollars should not be 
safeguarded, should not be spent and treated as precious taxpayer 
dollar resources. No one is saying they should not be scrutinized. No 
one is saying they should not be audited. No one is saying they should 
not be carefully examined as to how they spend those dollars. All they 
are saying to us is let's keep the community development block grant at 
a reasonable level. We are not asking for the Moon, not asking for a 
doubling of the funding or some great amount of money that the Federal 
Government cannot afford. But they are saying: Let us decide that. 
Washington decides a lot of things. That is the way our system works. 
But on this one they are saying to us: Let us decide, not Washington.
  So we know the value of the program. We know that over the past few 
years these grant funds have been reduced by nearly 25 percent. So just 
level funding, unfortunately, becomes a significant victory. Further 
loss of funds will directly harm these communities that rely upon these 
grant funds to address their most pressing needs. As I mentioned, 
mayors across the country rely upon these grants for vital services. I 
have heard directly from mayors in both parties about this. So further 
cuts to the block grant program will have a detrimental effect on 
cities and municipalities, some of which are the ones that have 
suffered the most from the foreclosure crisis, from the economic 
recession and the job-killing impact of that recession. If they are not 
digging out, they have just gotten out of the hole. They are not 
feeling all that secure yet. These grant funds allow them to make these 
decisions, allow them to make the investments they want to make.
  I yield the floor.

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