I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I am going to be very brief as Mr. Olver has told us an awful lot about H.R. 5850, the fiscal year 2011 Transportation and Housing, or THUD, bill. I just want to say, on a personal…
I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chairman, I am going to be very brief as Mr. Olver has told us an awful lot about H.R. 5850, the fiscal year 2011 Transportation and Housing, or THUD, bill.
I just want to say, on a personal level, thank you to Chairman Olver for his ability to work together on this bill. He has been a true gentleman and very, very cooperative. He has reached out and has really made this a pleasure to go through the entire hearing process this year.
I also want to thank the staff for all of their hard work. Mr. Olver has already named the staff members, but I also want to make sure that they know how much we appreciate all of their hard work.
I really believe, this year, that we did have an opportunity to adhere to a normal appropriations process. We have a closed or a modified open rule here today, and it hasn't always been easy throughout the whole process. We did have a very entertaining and, I think, a very productive hearing season, and I appreciate all of the efforts to bring some of the housing and transportation concerns to light, especially when the chairman and I don't always agree on the best solutions to tackle these complicated issues of spending, housing, and transportation.
The result of those hearings is the bill before us, totaling $67.4 billion, which is a mere $500 million below the fiscal year 2010 levels. Before we celebrate this reduction, we need to remember that the fiscal year 2010 bill was a whopping 23 percent over the year before. I want to say that again. The bill last year was 23 percent higher than the year before that. So, really, the $500 million reduction in this bill is a drop in the bucket of where we need to go to bring us back to some sanity and a reasonable state.
While Mr. Olver is a most accommodating chairman, I do have some disagreements with some of the funding decisions he has made in the bill before us. I know the administration has come to Chairman Olver and has complained that he didn't fund each and every new idea in the bill--and I commend him for that. However, in light of the drastic deficit situation that is facing this country, I would prefer a little more critique and restraint on some of the new, untested, and expensive programs before proposing funding at or above the President's request.
Livability? Sustainability? Have we defined these concepts? Obviously not, since this bill gives the Department of Transportation $4 million to figure out how to measure livability.
Should we be asking the American taxpayers to give us $4 million for the Department of Transportation to go and figure out what they want to do in your local communities when families are trying to keep their homes and invest in their businesses? I would say no.
Another example, really, is high-speed rail. The President got $8 billion in the stimulus bill for high-speed rail back in 2009, and only a very small fraction of that $8 billion has gone out the door as the Federal Railroad Administration is still working with recipients of those funds to nail down a grant agreement. The only industry that has been stimulated by the high-speed rail funds are the planners and the lobbyists. Yet this bill gives another $400 million on top of the President's request of $1 billion and on top of the whopping $2.5 billion they got in fiscal year 2010.
So if this bill becomes law, the taxpayers will have given--or more appropriately, borrowed--almost $12 billion for high-speed rail, and we still don't have one single operating high-speed rail line on the horizon.
Is this a horrible bill? No, it's not. Does it spend too much? Certainly, it does.
I would encourage Members to give careful consideration to the few amendments that are made in order today. There are some very thoughtful amendments that would reduce the cost of this bill, which would still fund the core programs under THUD at a respectable level.
In closing, I want to thank Chairman Obey, Chairman Olver, Ranking Member Lewis, and all of the members of the subcommittee for getting this bill to the House floor. Again, I would like to thank the staff, both the committee staff and personal office staff, for all of their hard work in putting together this legislative package.
I reserve the balance of my time.
I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis), the ranking member.
I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence).
(Mr. PENCE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
I yield myself 1 minute.
I just want to tell the gentleman--and I don't want to get into a partisan fight here, but there was not one person on the other side of the aisle who
voted to double infrastructure spending in the stimulus bill, spend half as much money overall, and by the President's own top economic adviser, would have created twice as many jobs as what did the stimulus bill that was actually passed and signed into law.
Our motion to recommit was to double the funding for infrastructure, if anybody's forgotten that. That was exactly what it was so that we could have actually created jobs here in the United States. The gentleman apparently forgets that he voted against that.
I reserve the balance of my time.
I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling).
I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.
I reserve the balance of my time.
I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to claim the time in opposition.
While I am not in opposition to the gentleman's amendment, I would like to yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. LaTourette).
I yield back the balance of my time.
I have an amendment at the desk.
Mr. Chairman, I would hope that since we've done very well in accepting these amendments this would be one that the chairman would accept also. I know how supportive he is of this. But I really would hope that we could find some consensus and common ground on cutting spending in this House.
My amendment would reduce or eliminate funding for programs-- President Obama, again, this is what President Obama has said and has signaled--that have adequate funding, or there is funding in this bill that's duplicative of other Federal programs. And again, we are just going to what the President asked for, or cutting programs that were not requested, and certainly are not even authorized.
This amendment would save the taxpayer $1.8 billion, without going under the President's budget on any of the accounts targeted for the reduction. The reduction of $1.8 billion would make this bill simply just 3.4 percent lower than the fiscal year 2010 level. And you remember that bill was 23 percent higher than the year before that. And it would send an important message, I think, to the American people that Congress can take care of the Nation's housing and transportation needs without further jeopardizing our Nation's fiscal health.
I would hope that my colleagues would join me in cutting this mere three cents on the dollar out of this bill, with an attempt to put this bill back on the path towards fiscal responsibility.
I reserve the balance of my time.
I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I appreciate the gentleman's concern for spending. I just wanted to see if we could just step back for a second.
We're going to have a $1.47 trillion deficit this year. Forty-three cents on every dollar that we're spending is borrowed money, and our kids, our grandchildren are going to have to pay for it--or our great- great-grandchildren, the way we're going--and it simply is not sustainable.
This is an extraordinarily modest amendment, and the gentleman says this is critical funding, absolutely necessary, that we have to fund these things. Maybe you should tell your President, the President of your own party, that he should have asked for these things. These are not my reductions. This is what the President says is needed for these programs, the high-speed rail. There's a billion dollars in this bill-- would be after the cut. He's got $1.4.
We're taking $400 million out of it. The President asked for a billion dollars. He's had $12 billion, in total, with $8 billion in the stimulus package, $2.5 billion last year, another billion dollars this year. And the money hasn't been spent yet, hasn't even been allotted or a contract signed. There is no need for this spending here to have current contracts go on. It just goes beyond rationale, as far as I'm concerned.
When we are digging ourselves in a financial hole like we are and we continue to keep digging, why don't we say, Stop, let's cut some spending.
This is a very modest cut that the President didn't request, and several of these programs are not even authorized or requested by the President. I mean, I guess it's great if we just go ahead as the Appropriations Committee, say, the heck, we don't need to have authorization for anything. Actually, this whole bill, there's very little that actually is authorized in this bill.
Does anybody go home and listen anymore? Listen to your constituents and hear what they're saying. Can we afford this kind of spending? No, we cannot. If we'll listen and do what the people are telling us to, and that's to modestly reduce spending, cut spending. And if we can't do it here on this very small amendment on this huge
bill, we're never going to save our fiscal future for our kids and our grandchildren.
I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.
I thank the gentleman very much and for claiming time in opposition while I'm supporting the amendment.
I rise in support of the DeFazio amendment for two reasons:
First, with the stresses on the Highway Trust Fund and the dependence of our States on the moneys from that fund, we're violating our fiduciary responsibilities by granting authority to take $200 million, much-needed dollars, out of the trust fund for a program that has yet to be defined legislatively or otherwise.
Second, as noted in the minority views of the report accompanying this bill, the concept of livable communities is just that. It's a concept. I've never seen the definition of a livable community. There's nothing defined of what a ``livable community'' is.
The initiatives that would be funded under this concept with the $200 million involve activities that are rightly part of the jurisdictions of State and local governments and metropolitan planning commissions.
And again, I would rise in strong support of this amendment.
I thank the chairman for yielding.
Actually, I do oppose this. I agree with the idea of putting more money into where you would like to have the money go. My concern is that this is taking money out of reverse mortgages for seniors, and while the President requested $250 million in his budget, it is funded at $150 million. This would take another 10 out of that. The problem is that if there is increased demand, if more seniors want to have reverse mortgages, then it simply cannot happen without the funding that's there.
So I would just oppose it, not because of the purpose where you would like to have the money go, but we're taking money away from seniors here who may, in fact, want to have a reverse mortgage on their home.
Will the gentleman yield?
Well, when we start getting phone calls, I'll refer them to your office. I appreciate the gentleman's concern, and again, I think the purpose has merit, where the money is going, but I'm just concerned about the limitation here. Thank you.