Remarks by:
Clinton Jones, Esq.
Senior Counsel,
House Financial Services Committee
House of Representatives
A SUBCOMMITTEE UPDATE
It’s always difficult to speak after a Congressman, so I won’t attempt to match that.
Mr. Ney really wanted to come. We’re in the middle of this hearing right now, until about forty minutes ago. Part of my job as Senior Counsel is to give things to him at the hearing. We had calculated that a lot of Members would leave, the witnesses would testify, and we would have plenty of time for questioning. We got to the second panel, and he kept on looking at the clock.
Well, more Members starting coming in and sitting down. The rules require that each Member gets five minutes to ask questions. So we started counting off and it was looking like it was going to be tight, so at some point, I think around 12:05, 12:10, he gives me the speech and says, ‘Here, you do it.’ We all found that amusing. I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’ So we all start laughing, but he said, ‘No, I can’t leave. I want you go over there and deliver the speech.’ So here I am.
I’ve been here before, and could be here again. This is my tenth year on the Hill. Mr. Oxley (R-Ohio) was here, I think last year, and he was actually my first boss as Chairman of the Committee. When Mr. Ross said that a Republican should be in the chair, I was reminiscing about how when I came in ’93 we were actually in the minority, and so I wouldn’t have even had a clue that we would ever have that opportunity. So what a difference a couple of years make.
I thought what I would speak about just really quickly is to give you an update. I don’t like to speak to issues that I’m not really responsible for. I might say something that’s not part of the rule book for the cockpit, so I won’t address any of the tax break and tax cut matters. I’ll leave that to the Congressmen to do.
ALWAYS THE STEPCHILD
The Republicans really understand and recognize that Housing is a very important issue. Mr. Ney, who was elected to the Subcommittee Chair, reminded me that he comes from a town of 4,000 people, so he wanted to do more programs on rural housing. So at the risk of being reprimanded, I reminded him that I come from a town of 800, so I have even a better idea about rural housing and rural issues.
I know rural housing will always be the stepchild for special consideration. It seems like where there are numbers, there’s basically power. In the very rural areas it’s very hard to have a concentration of the same kind.
But he did ask me to emphasize rural housing, and I’m happy to announce that we will be doing Hearings on rural housing. The first is June 19 and I think we’re going to have somebody from this organization testifying. And I think what we plan for that hearing is for the General Accounting Office to come and talk about some of the reports they’ve done in the past. We’ll have the Inspector General come and talk about waste, fraud and other issues that we need to be looking at or that they’ll be working on, so that we can create a threshold for measuring steps down the road.
We’ve invited and requested the Under Secretary of USDA to to participate. And this morning — I guess his spokesman let him know what happened and the dynamics of what happened, so this morning all of a sudden h™e has a scheduling conflict and he’s not able to come. I don’t know if you guys scared him off or what.
So what I think we’re going to do is have a second hearing on a date that is convenient for Mr. Dorr (USDA Under Secretary, Rural Development) to have a chance to come by himself and appear before the Committee. Because we’ve made it to the point where we want to hear from the Under Secretary that USDA acknowledges that this is a very important program and that they need to give it due consideration as well as all the other programs up there.
GOING ON THE ROAD
So far I think by the time July 4 comes around, we will have had thirteen or fourteen Hearings already this year. We are planning to go on the road. I know we’ll be out in Los Angeles around the end of the month or the beginning of July. We’ll be going to Columbus some time in the fall. I think we’re looking at going to Georgia also. At these hearings we’ll be looking at a broad spectrum of issues. One is the Section 8 program. And we’ll also be looking at Rural Housing as well.
There are a couple of Bills that we are very actively pursuing right now, and we smoothed them out, except maybe for one, and I expect these bills will come on the Floor very soon. Our strategy is to move these bills before we really get too far into the new appropriations process.
First there’s the Administration’s home ownership program, the American Dream Down Payment Initiative, H.R. 1276. This has the highest priority from the Administration, as well as the highest priority from the community of the inner city. If we can move that bill, it will provide $200 million for grants to local governments and states for down payment assistance to those who are trying to pursue the homeownership dream.
H.R. 659 AND H.R. 1614
H.R. 659 is an FHA mortgage insurance program for hospitals. We think that there will be some assistance to rural areas, so that as they rebuild hospital‹s they can use the FHA mortgage insurance program to do that. Right now it seems that the program is concentrated in New York and we want to loosen up some of the underwriting standards so that we can get to some of the smaller communities.
We have H.R. 1614, which we call the Home Streets Program. And what it is, is you tear down public housing and you rebuild it. You’ve heard all these success stories about community rebuilding. What we have done to that bill — through the initiative of Congressman Leach (R-Iowa) — is to require that a certain percentage of that Home Streets money now goes to small communities of 30,000 or less. Specifically, preferences will go to communities that do not have public housing authorities.
If you go to these small towns, which I know you do, you’ll see a lot of downtowns that are just sitting there, idle. Rebuild it where the first floor will be some type of business, and the second floor actually could be some kind of affordable housing. So we are moving the Home Streets Program to an area where we think that there’s a lot of need — in the smaller communities — and then we’ll have broader support for the Home Streets Program.
REAUTHORIZING FLOOD INSURANCE
Flood insurance? Flood insurance is interesting. We have to reauthorize the program. Last year the program expired at the end of December and so for, I think, the first two weeks of January, the market was scared, people who weren’t coping were very nervous and upset, and so we put through a quick bill to do a quick reauthorization for the next year. At this point it’s a sensitive issue. And I expect the Committee to mark up the authorization bill by the end of the month so that we can get past this year and move out to maybe a four- or five-year authorization.
Outside of that — I think that’s going to give us a handful, especially for this particular year. I’m not sure what the next year will bring. The budget climate is very tight. There’s not a lot of money out there. In fact, we’re been asked to find money. I wouldn’t really expect a lot of initiatives or new programs, unless we find a way to pay for them.
A TIGHT ELECTION CYCLE
As we get into 2004, the election cycle will be very tight, I think the House and Senate will once again have to stop for elections, and of course we have the Presidential election. So usually in those years it’s very hard to do a lot of bold and new and great things. So from a staff perspective, I really do not foresee a lot of major initiatives next year. Whatever we do, we pretty much need to do it this year and get it done. I think we can do it. The House Subcommittee remains very committed to doing that.
And certainly we look forward to working with you in the future on some of these issues. I think the hearing on June 19th is probably the first hearing we’ve had specifically on rural housing in at least eight or nine years. I know I’ve been here for ten years and if we’ve done one earlier on, I can’t remember when. But talk to me from day to day, I think we’re going to do a couple of hearings on this. The first one will be an overall view of what’s going on, and then after that we will be in conflicted areas.
You’ve heard me speak before on all these various concerns about the Multifamily Program. Maybe I should leave it at that. But I’d like to really know exactly what’s going on, and how it’s going, and how we can make it better. I just do not have a lot of confidence in the Multifamily program, with what’s happening in rural housing, and I think that we ought to set the target and start looking at it: Where are the problems? Where are the challenges? I think that the hearings and our collaboration with the GAO and with the Inspector General, will help us to come to some kind of understanding of exactly what are the challenges out there.
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