Remarks by:
Congressman Mike Ross
(D-Ark.) Member,
House Financial Services Committee
FISCAL DISCIPLINE AND RURAL HOUSING
People ask me how much I enjoy being in Washington, D.C. A lot of folks think we have to live up here. And I tell them, it’s a nice place to visit two or three nights a week, but I wouldn’t want to live there. But I do enjoy my time in our nation’s capital. Serving in the United States Congress, most of us do what we call the commute thing.
My opinion is, if you don’t have votes, there’s no reason for you all to be up here, as long as you have competent people. It’s one thing to be called a Representative, it’s another thing to be one. To be one, you’d better be back home, listening to the needs of the people and bringing their concerns and issues to our nation’s capital, and really be a voice for the people.
So two or three nights of the week I’m in Washington, I’m up here voting, representing the people of Arkansas’s 4th Congressional District, and the other three or four nights a week I’m back home in Prescott, Arkansas, a town of about 3,400 people — a few traffic lights, a Sonic and a Pizza Hut, and that’s about it. So I think it does help my perspective on things that are important to all of us.
ACUTE HOUSING NEEDS
One of the reasons that I’m so interested in housing issues is that I represent a very large and rural and poor District. The average household income is $17,000 a year. It’s a very rural area.
To give you an idea of it, my District borders the entire Louisiana border, half the Mississippi border, all of the Texas border, and half the Oklahoma border. So last Saturday when we drove 540 miles in the district just to give two speechens — and that’s pretty typical, given the way my District is laid out and the amount of time we spend traveling, trying to get around and see the folks in its 29 counties and 148 towns. And I’m so proud to represent them.
In fact, we average about 5,000 miles a month in the car back home in Arkansas in the District. But as I travel those back roads of Arkansas, I see the conditions in which so many people live: people who are trying to do the right thing and stay off welfare, who are working at jobs with no benefits, trying to get by on $10,712 a year. That’s our minimum wage in this country, and that’s when you work forty hours a week, fifty-two weeks a year, every single day, and never take a day off for vacation.
And I don’t have to tell any of you in this room how acute the housing needs are, especially in rural America.
THE BLUE DOG COALITION
I’m one of the thirty-five Democrats who belong to what’s called the Blue Dog Coalition. There are thirty-five of us who are not afraid to come to Washington and stand up to liberals and say that we’re conservative Democrats. And basically we have but one mission in life, and that is to restore fiscal responsibility to our nation’s government — to put an end to deficit spending and begin to pay down the National Debt.
And I want to just speak briefly about that. I’ll get back to the housing thing, because the two are linked together, probably in more ways than you’ve ever thought of.
SIX TRILLION DOLLARS
This country of ours is six trillion dollars ($6,000,000,000,000) in debt. From 1997 through 2001 we did not deficit-spend as a nation. Last year we deficit-spent $199 billion. This year we will deficit-spend close to $500 billion, and don’t let anyone tell you that that’s because of the war. The war is responsible for $80 billion of that. Actually we would still deficit-spend over $400 billion had there been no war in Iraq.
Now why should this matter to all of you?
Because this country spends one billion dollars a day — $1 billion a day — simply to pay interest on the National Debt.
Now, how much is a billion dollars? I put this number on my calculator, I get the little “do again.”
I’ll tell you what a billion dollars is. With a billion dollars, you could build 200 brand new elementary schools every single day in America, just with the interest that we’re paying on the National Debt. Think how many people we could help land a new life, a new beginning in an affordable home, with a billion dollars a day.
I’ve got three Interstate projects pending in my district right now. One of them will cost a billion-and-a half to finish. That’s a staggering number. But you can pay a day and a half’s interest on the National Debt, and I could complete that Interstate and bring all kinds of economic opportunities and jobs into the Midwest. But those are the things that we’re unable to do for our kids, for jobs, for working families, because that’s one tax we can’t cut. I call it “the Debt Tax.” And until we stop deficit-spending and until we begin to pay down the National Debt, that’s one tax that can’t go away.
How many of you here pay Federal income tax? [Laughter] There’s a guy with the IRS, undercover back in the rear, to get everybody he can. [Laughter]
Let me tell you something that you may or may not know: The first $2,559 you pay every year in your Federal income tax doesn’t go for a stronger military, or for better education for your kids, or for more affordable and better health care, or for more opportunity for families to get into a house they can afford. It simply goes to pay interest on the National Debt. The first $2,559 you pay.
I was one of twenty-eight Democrats who supported President Bush’s first tax cut. We had a surplus at that time. We really were giving people their money back. I was one of twenty-eight Democrats to vote for that first tax cut. And everybody got it; we really were giving people their money back. This last tax cut we passed just a few weeks ago — $350 billion — $330 billion, until we had to throw $20 billion to the states.
This time we’re not giving people their money back.
DEFICIT SPENDING
Because every dime that you cut taxes now, it’s deficit-spending. And what’s happened since that first tax cut. It was the biggest tax cut in 20 years, $1,300,000,000,000 — I voted for it, I’m glad I did, I think it was the right thing to do. None of us could have known that we’d be seeing September 11, that we’d be financing two wars, in Afghanistan and in Iraq, that we’d see two million people lose their jobs. But those things have happened and we’ve gone back to the days of deficit spending. So that every dime you get back today, your kids and grand-kids someday have got to ìpay for. Someone’s got to pay it back somewhere down the road or we’re going to see a huge economic collapse. And so what concerns me about that is that, if you earn over $26,000 a year, you’ll get $400 back for every kid you’ve got at home. I don’t know about you, but I’m opening a savings account for each one of them, because it’s their money, they’re the ones who have got to pay it back some day.
Now, if you’re working and trying to stay off welfare and earning $26,000 a year or less, you’re not getting that tax cut. On an income of $100,000 with three kids at home, you’re getting $1,200 back. If you earn $26,000 a year with three kids at home, you get nothing back. Now how that’s supposed to stimulate the economy, I don’t understand.
DIRECT IMPACT
The reason I bring these things up is because they have a direct impact on your business and the things that you’re able to do in partnership with the United States Government.
According to the USDA Economic Research Service, four mill“ion households are classified as being in housing poverty. That means they have an economic need, they have inadequate quality, they have crowding. The National Low-Income Housing Coalition states that nearly one quarter — a quarter — of rural households, and those are the ones I’m interested in, pay more than 30% of their income for housing. More than 2.1 million rural households pay more than half their income for housing, and 2.5 million pay between 30% and 50% of their income for housing. And if we’re going to get this economy going again, I think we’ve got to put money into the hands of those who will spend it.
WHAT VOTERS ARE SAYING
Being on an airplane flying back and forth between Arkansas and Washington every week, I meet a lot of people. There’s no easy way to get there. I recently was part of a bipartisan group to go to Germany, to the U.S. military hospital outside the Ramstadt medical center to check on our injured soldiers there. It took me eight hours to get to Germany. It takesë me seven hours to get home every week. I fly to Memphis, change for Little Rock, it’s about a two-hour car ride home from there. So that’s four different people a week I get to sit beside on an airplane.
You know, I’ve met some interesting folks. I met a guy, a Republican. He was for the first tax cut, but he asked me to vote against the second.
He says, “You see, I own 918 rental units.” And he says, “I have half an apartment building empty.” And he says, “My accountant tells me that if they legislate that tax cut, I’m going to save about $150,000 a year.” And I say, “What would you do with that? That’s a lot of money where I come from.” And he says, “My accountant also tells me that if you put money in the hands of those who don’t already have everything that they need, people who are working for a living and paying taxes, put money in their hands, they’ll go buy the stuff that they need to raise their families or things they want.” And he says, “Then I can crank up those other 459 new rentals.” And he says, “Because if I get them filled and I build more, my accountant tells me then I’d make half a million more a year.”
We’ve got to put money into the hands of people who need low-income housing so that they can do business with people like you. I think that makes sense.
CUTTING PROGRAMS
Rural homeowners pay higher mortgage interest rates for shorter mortgage terms. Only 23% of owner-occupied homes in rural areas — only 23% — have a conventional mortgage, while in suburban areas 57% of such homes have a regular mortgage. The Administration’s HUD budget eliminates the Rural Housing Economic Development Program: That's $25 million less money for you to help people to have a home. In addition to this is the proposed elimination of USDA’s Rural Community Development Initiative Program: That’s $6 million less to help you help people have a home.
I don’t have to tell you that these are the only two rural capacity building programs that exist, and in the new budüget, they both go away. That’s $31 million in money that could go to help people have a house and get out of some of the conditions that I see when I drive my very rural and poor District every week.
The Section 515 program is important to a lot of you. I joined Congressman Bob Ney (R-Ohio) in a bipartisan effort to sponsor that amendment to H.R. 3995, the Housing Affordability for America Act. Our amendment was successful, the bill passed full Committee — the Committee that I serve on, the House Financial Services Committee — and then it went to the floor, where the Administration objected. We’re still waiting to hear what the objection’s on. That amendment allows prepayment of USDA Rural Housing Service Section 515 loans and secures financing to improve the condition of units. It’s what I call powerful tenants legislation. It frees you up and reduces some of the government red tape so that you can go about doing what you do best, and that’s trying to help people have a place to live.
There are other pieces of legislation we’re now considering, and Congressman Ney could not be with us because he’s actually chairing in the Committee room right now, but he’s got one of his very capable staffers to be here, and as we were walking up he said he was going to talk about some of the legislation pending. So rather than have you all hear it twice, and out of respect for Clinton Jones, I’m going to clear out now.
But I just want to say that I want to be an advocate for you because you’re being advocates for those who need affordable housing. And I applaud you for what you do. I meet developers, and there’s one guy I’ll never forget who told me, “When I started to build, I was trying to make a lot of money, and I did make a lot of money.” But he said, “What’s most rewarding out of it is seeing people that actually finally found themselves in a home that they can call their own, and get out of some of the conditions which they had lived in, perhaps for several generations.”
MAKING A DIFFERENCE
So what you do makes a difference in people’s lives. And I want to thank you for that, and thank you for being involved in this group, and for being involved in your respective communities back home, because I’m a strong believer that government can’t be all things to all people. I think we all have a huge responsibility in our respective communities to get involved and try to help people to help themselves. And that’s exactly what you do, and I want to thank you for it. It’s great to be with you all.
May God bless you, and may God bless America.
Next: A Subcommittee Update