[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 89 (Tuesday, June 10, 2014)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E937]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  TRANSPORTATION, HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES 
                        APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2015

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                          HON. DAVID E. PRICE

                           of north carolina

                    in the house of representatives

                          Monday, June 9, 2014

       The House in Committee of the Whole House on the state of 
     the Union had under consideration the bill (H.R. 4745) making 
     appropriations for the Departments of Transportation, Housing 
     and Urban Development, and related agencies for the fiscal 
     year ending September 30, 2015, and for other purposes:

  Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chair, I rise today in opposition to 
the House FY15 Transportation-HUD Appropriations bill. Today's bill 
lands with the same sound as its abbreviation . . . THUD.
  While I appreciate the hard work of Chairman Latham, Ranking Member 
Pastor, and their dedicated Appropriations staff, our insufficient 
302(b) allocation, made worse with lower than expected FHA and Ginnie 
Mae receipts, makes this bill's funding levels unacceptable. Simply 
put, the House bill would make sustaining and improving our nation's 
infrastructure impossible, a task made more difficult by years and 
years of deferred maintenance.
  On the transportation side, the bill makes deep cuts to the capital 
programs and job creating infrastructure investments. Amtrak is cut by 
$200 million despite record ridership; the Federal Transit 
Administration's New Starts program is cut by $252 million, stifling 
the shovel-ready projects; and the TIGER program is cut by more than 80 
percent, despite the program's popularity and success at advancing 
critical surface transportation projects across the country, with 
thousands of meritorious proposals still unfunded. And, once again, the 
bill includes no funding for progress towards a high speed rail system.
  Funding for community development and housing safety-net programs is 
even worse. The bill would cut funding for the HOME program by 30 
percent to $700 million, the lowest level in the program's history. The 
bill would also limit the ability for our country to maintain and 
improve our nation's public housing stock by funding the Public Housing 
Capital Fund below the sequester level and would only provide a paltry 
$25 million for the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative, the successor 
program of Hope VI program and our only comprehensive public housing 
revitalization program.
  Additionally, the bill would force public housing agencies to turn 
needy families away from shelter by significantly underfunding the 
administrative fees needed to run the housing voucher program, the best 
hope of thousands of America's poorest families for safe and decent 
housing.
  Another program that provides housing to vulnerable Americans in my 
district and many others is the Housing for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA) 
program. Despite benefiting from an amendment in the Appropriations 
Committee, the bill before us today would cut HOPWA by more than $24 
million below last year's funding level.
  Perhaps the most disappointing and regrettable fact about this bill 
is that the cuts it imposes could have been avoided, had the Republican 
leadership understood that we cannot cut our way into fiscal balance. 
House leaders could reconsider their refusal to talk with the President 
and work with him to address the real drivers of the deficit--tax 
expenditures and mandatory spending. Instead, they have again and again 
slashed critical domestic investments.
  We must rid ourselves of unworkable budget caps and sequestration, 
lifting the drag they represent on our economy and the mockery they 
make of the appropriations process. The bill before us today is Exhibit 
A of this travesty, and I urge my colleagues to raise their voices and 
their votes against it.

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