Barney Frank

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. We are in the process, we are in the process of trying to determine what the majority determines. The majority, until it has voted on this, has not spoken yet. But finally I have to say I understand the gentleman can feel beleaguered sometimes when he says he is getting no appreciation for supporting the administration. I think my colleagues have to adopt what Harry Truman said with regard to friendship: ``If you want appreciation in Washington, get a dog.''

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I would say to the gentleman, I want to help them, but creating the war of the poor against the very poor is public policy at its worst. To make the very poor the enemy of the poor is a very grave mistake. What we do here is underfund the housing authorities. We are going to be rescinding some money. Well, we have found that the housing department had saved more money than people had thought and had created some reserves. So we plan to rescind that and then we will claim that we cannot afford to help people. By the way, we should have added, it is not simply resources. I have heard people on the other side talk about how bad housing is.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, we are talking about the same number of section 8s. Yes, we are talking about renewing the existing section 8s. I am willing to bet most people who heard the gentleman when he talked about all this new money in the budget deal thought he was talking about new units. We now have a big waiting list. Maintaining the same number of units, preventing them from dropping, is not going to eat into the waiting list.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, first, I know we have now twice heard the argument that the budget deal is going to give all this money for section 8's. My understanding is that it is simply a renewal of the existing section 8's. That was originally cited as an answer to the question of the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Watt], when poor people are excluded from this because of the retargeting, where will they go? And the gentleman from New York said, well, we are giving all this money to section 8's. But that is to continue the existing section 8's. That is renewal. It does not add one unit. It prevents the loss of units. It does not add units. I would say to the gentleman from Louisiana, I do not think there are solutions to these problems that exclude greater resources. I do not think you can counsel people into filling a hole in the wall.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, when they talk about the budget deal, are they talking about the renewal of section 8's? And does the gentleman really consider the renewal of section 8's new resources for housing?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. More money is part of the answer. When we are worried about the military, more money is the answer. When we are worried about space, more money is the answer. Money only gets denigrated when it is poor people who may get some. I would also say to the gentleman from New York, first of all, we are talking about section 8, not public housing.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, they are going to transition to where? The gentleman keeps saying they are going to transition to somewhere. He said before, we are going to spend all this money, it is just to renew the section 8, it is these same number of units. And this notion that they are going to transition to somewhere. Where? Oz? Fairyland? This is out of sight, out of mind to the very poor. Of course we should make these changes. But, essentially, what the gentleman from Long Island [Mr. Lazio] is saying is, dealing with these very poor people has not worked because they are too hard to deal with and let us start ignoring them and then we can claim success and God knows what will happen to them.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I would be glad to have my amendment say that this does not take effect until we have no bad housing projects. Once that happens, then this could take effect.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, first let me say to the gentleman from Massachusetts, I know he has pointed out that the rationale presented will not apply to section 8, but have no fear, they will come up with one tomorrow night; by tomorrow, overnight, they will come up with a new reason. Mr. Chairman, this is a further effort to get some of the unnecessary bureaucratic gobbledegook out of this bill. Last year we debated at length in this bill an effort by the majority to raise the amount of rent that tenants could be forced to pay. The maximum is now 30 percent. The majority was determined to raise it. I have to say to those Members on the majority side who were here last year and a few on our side who loyally voted with the chairman and supported him on vote after vote to raise the rents, maybe they feel a little bit perturbed that that was all in vain because that part has now been given up. I admire the fact that this bill no longer tries to raise the rents of the poor. Instead it tries to complicate them unduly and unnecessarily for the low income people and for the housing authorities. We agreed last year, although I must say the chairman of the subcommittee last year was determined not to be agreed with, when we kept agreeing with him, but we agreed that having the 30 percent be a minimum as well as a maximum was a bad idea. Our amendment last year said it should not be a minimum. It said it should be a maximum. This amendment says very simply the housing authorities can charge whatever rents they want by whatever method they want as long as that amount does not exceed 30 percent of income. The chairman of the subcommittee is fond of having a flat rent charged for apartments. What this bill does, and it takes about five or seven pages to do it, it once again orders the housing authority to engage in a very complicated choice process. It says the housing authority will set a flat rent for the unit, and it will have a 30- percent maximum rent. And then it will have the tenant choose each year which one he wants. But if the tenant has chosen the flat rent and the tenant's income goes down, then the tenant can be given a hardship exemption. If the tenant has chosen the 30 percent and the tenant's income goes up, then she has an 18-month phase-in, and during the 18- month phase-in she has a 12-month reelection period. It is a seven-page complication, frankly, I think to save a little bit of face because the chairman was determined to take a nick out of the Brook amendment. And they decided last year they had taken the wrong nick. But there are seven pages of complication. Once again, it orders it to every housing authority. The chairman is a fan of the flat rent method. Let the housing authorities decide. That might be appropriate for some housing authorities. It might be too difficult for others. This amendment that I offer allows them to do that. It says to the housing authorities: You do whatever you want. If you want to tie it to income with a 30 percent cap, you can do that. If you want to give them a choice between a flat rent and a 30 percent, you can do that. Are we now deciding that everywhere in the United States in every type of project there is this one method that works and that has to be done, and it is a method where you choose either a flat rent or a percentage of your income every year? But there is a way to get out of one and there is a way to get out of another, and it is, once again, piling on a complication. It is about the third or fourth additional mandate that we put on the housing authorities. The alternative seems to me to be very simple. It says: No, there is no minimum. If you want to have a work incentive, you can have that. If you want to have a flat rent, you can have that. If you want to put a top of 20 percent, you can have that. You can do, as the housing authority, anything you want. You might decide for different tenants different things work. The housing authorities might even want to experiment. My friend from Louisiana talked about the importance of experiments. Are we the only ones who can experiment? I do not think that is the best way to experiment. Why not give the housing authorities flexibility and let various housing authorities experiment with different types of rents rather than take the pet project of the chairman, which is this very complicated system. I hope, Mr. Chairman, that Members, before voting on this, will have a chance to read these seven pages. In fact maybe instead of a vote on this we should have a test. And we will have a test on that. And if a majority of the Members can understand it and explain it, then we will have it enacted. And if a majority of the Members cannot, we will not have it enacted. I have another provision that I want to suggest to my colleagues. They said that the tenants really want the work requirement and the tenants want the self-sufficiency.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I am going to propose an amendment later on that we have a tenants' referendum on these things. I do not doubt the sincerity of my colleagues in insisting that the work requirement and the self-sufficiency contract are really what the tenants want. They should want the tenants then to have a referendum on this because that would show how much they want it. And instead of this extraordinarily complicated seven-page scheme, why not simply say to the housing authorities: You can do flat rent if you want. You can do per unit rent. You can do a rent tied to income. The only thing you cannot do is go above 30 percent. That is what this amendment says.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I am delighted to have the support of a man who has done more for public housing, I believe, than any man who has served in the Congress of the United States, and for the tenants. I want to point that the complications here are such that some people are going to get trapped by it, and some people are going to wind up paying more than 30 percent of their income because there is a very complicated set of calculations that have to be made. There is also the possibility of coercion. So it is unnecessarily complicated, and it may lead to periods where people will wind up paying more than 30 percent. My amendment says again they have total flexibility but it makes that impossible.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. No, I will not yield. I would say to the gentleman, as he said to the gentleman from Massachusetts, abide by the rules. I just heard someone say that. I would say to the gentleman that he unintentionally, I am sure, gave a very inaccurate picture. But even more important is this in this diversionary effort by the gentleman from New York.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman urged my friend to abide by the rules. It is easy to abide by the rules when one can change them at will, as the gentleman can who is chairman of the Committee on Rules. I would also say I am disappointed in him. In the first place, he talked about those agencies which are grouped with HUD once the 602(b)s are there, and he said EPA and Veterans and HUD. Did NASA slip his mind? Was that an unintentional error? I guess it must have been. NASA is one of those agencies. The gentleman left NASA out. Maybe he thought some people might think that a manned space shuttle is less important.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. The gentleman may have voted to abolish it, but that does not entitle him to abolish it in his mind and act as if it was abolished. The fact is that the gentleman just said, if you give more money to HUD, it must come under the 602(b) process once an allocation is made from EPA or the Department of Veterans affairs. He left out NASA.