During a House Appropriation Committee markup meeting held before the Congressional recess, Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) spoke about affordable housing in the FY26 THUD and Energy Bill.
00:00Gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Quigley, is recognized for the purposes of an amendment.
00:05Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have an amendment at the desk as the reading be dispensed with.
00:09Without objection, the reading of the amendment is dispensed with, and the gentleman is recognized for remarks on his amendment.
00:15Mr. Chairman, I do want to recognize Chairman Womack's remarks, and as co-chair of the SNARK caucus, I do appreciate what he had to say.
00:26But this amendment would restore funding for the pro-housing, also known as Pathways to Removing Obstacles program.
00:34I'm offering this amendment because we all know the cost of housing is too high.
00:40It's the American dream, but for too many of our constituents, the dream's out of reach.
00:45In the 1980s, the typical first-time homebuyer was in their late 20s.
00:52Today, the median age for first-time buyers is 38 and rising.
00:59In my home city of Chicago, the median home price is now $350,000.
01:05That requires an income of roughly $90,000 a year, and the median income is $75,000.
01:13Make no mistake, high mortgages and rents increase homelessness too.
01:17But as the cost of housing goes up, fewer people can afford their rent, landing them on the street, and further relying on government help.
01:27But why are housing prices so high?
01:31It's simple.
01:32The most important reason is we're not building enough housing.
01:36We are facing a housing shortage of approximately 5 million units, according to Brookings.
01:42There are a lot of reasons we've stopped building housing.
01:45One of them, as my colleagues on both sides agree on, is red tape.
01:50The National Association of Home Builders estimates regulations account for almost 24% of the average sale price of a single-family home.
02:02For multifamily housing, it's 40%.
02:06The federal government cannot and should not tell state and local governments what to do.
02:10But local elected officials from all over the country in blue and red states have said that housing costs and the need to build are the number one challenge.
02:19And that federal funds offered as incentives to remove some of the regulations stopping housing construction are needed.
02:28This is exactly what the pro-housing program has been doing and can continue to do if we support it.
02:35It's a small pot of money, relatively, $100 million.
02:38It has provided grants to dozens of local governments to change their zoning regulations to allow for construction more housing.
02:45Just some of those locations, San Francisco, Austin, Cincinnati, Detroit, Norman, Oklahoma, Oakland, Portland, Oregon, St. Louis, Toledo, Tucson, Sacramento, Long Beach, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, and Montana.
03:02The inability to build housing is no longer only a problem for blue cities.
03:08We are facing a housing crisis across the country, and we need every tool in the toolbox to fix it.
03:14This is a modest program that leverages a small pot of funds to generate outsized housing production.
03:20I want to close by asking three things of my colleagues.
03:24Vote for this amendment, work with me to find a pay-for for this critical program, and work with me and our Senate colleagues on a package of improvements to the program.
03:34I am working with Senator Schatz, who is looking for a Republican partner on ways to strengthen this program.
03:41We are interested in ensuring resources spark not just regulatory changes, but actual new housing starts, outcome, not just inputs.
03:51With that, I encourage my colleagues to vote for this amendment.
03:53I am not going to ask for a recorded vote, but encourage your support.
03:58I thank the gentleman.
04:00The gentleman from Arkansas, Mr. Wormack, is recognized to respond to the amendment.
04:04Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
04:05For a minute, I thought he was going to offer and withdraw, but no such luck.
04:09But it's good that you're not going to ask for a recorded vote.
04:15First and foremost, as I've said many times, our challenge here is it exceeds our allocation, and if adopted, would prevent us from being able to go to the floor.
04:24As my good friend knows, we have not funded the FY24 or FY25, this program, and the FY24 or FY25 House bills.
04:31It's a creation, really, of the Senate T-HUD committee and something we accepted in conference and was a fact-of-life inclusion in the FY25 full-year CR.
04:43So that's a consequence of CRs rather than what I consider to be good-faith negotiations.
04:49So I agree with the intent of the program.
04:52It's nice to have.
04:54When compared to the rental assistance and supportive set-asides, we necessarily fund in the bill.
05:00I don't want to sound like a broken record.
05:02We have a tight allocation.
05:04But I maintain that this bill takes the right approach in funding the safety and essential HUD services necessary to care for our nation's most vulnerable.
05:13It trims the fad at HUD, and to bust our allocation for this increase would be irresponsible.
05:19I urge a no vote.
05:20I yield.
05:22Thank you, gentlemen.
05:22Are there other members wishing to address the amendment?
05:25The gentleman from Maryland is recognized.
05:29I was going to bring this up earlier when Wasserman Schultz, but she was closing, so I didn't have the opportunity to do it.
05:38Maybe I just need to speak up.
05:43As I said, Mr. Chairman, I was going to bring this up before because I think it's relevant to the entire committee.
05:50And the chairman of the subcommittee just said we have limited allegations.
05:55I made that comment when I spoke about the amendment I offered.
05:59I get that.
06:01But what I think is important to bring up, which does not relate directly to the gentleman's amendment,
06:07but it relates to every amendment, and it relates to our committee,
06:11Mr. Levin mentioned it a little earlier, either yesterday or it's reported today,
06:24something that all of you ought to be very concerned about, all of us ought to be concerned about.
06:31It is about Mr. Vogt, who believes he is the first and final arbiter of how much is spent.
06:42And all of us ought to be concerned about that.
06:48I will tell you, if it was Shalanda Young had said this, I would be saying the same thing.
06:53First of all, I'm going to quote him, there is no, there is no voter in the country that went to the polls and said,
07:07quote, I'm voting for bipartisan appropriation process.
07:11Let's quote, vote.
07:13He'd be very happy about this committee at this point in time because, unfortunately, we aren't very bipartisan.
07:21The vote then went on to say, that may be the view of something that appropriators want to maintain.
07:31He didn't say democratic appropriators.
07:34He said appropriators would want to maintain.
07:37The story goes on.
07:39He did, however, acknowledge the federal spending power lies with Congress.
07:46He said, I quote again, a vote.
07:49It is one of the most constitutional foundational principles, but that power of the purse does not mean.
07:56And Dash interposed, it is a ceiling.
08:02It is not a floor.
08:07In other words, what he is saying is, send me a 302A and I'll damn well decide how to spend it.
08:18Now, if that's what this committee is, and we don't oppose that as a committee, then I'll just assume resign.
08:28Vote reiterated his view that the president, that of Donald Trump, that the 51-year-old Empowerment Control Act,
08:40which bars the president from withholding congressionally approved funds without asking Congress, is unconstitutional.
08:46Vote believes that it is his decision, obviously the president's decision, to decide exactly what we're going to spend.
08:59And if we appropriate $100 for an item that we think is very important, and he wants to spend $10 on it, he believes that constitutionally is correct.
09:10If we believe that, again, I don't want to be on this committee.
09:19The Constitution clearly says we raise and we spend.
09:29And I don't want to be told, Mr. Hoyer, I know this project was very important to you.
09:34You appropriated $100 in your bill.
09:37The Senate voted for $100.
09:39The president signed $100.
09:41But guess what?
09:42We're only going to spend $10.
09:43Now, A, I think we ought to be more bipartisan.
09:52But certainly, certainly in terms of the integrity of this committee, we ought to be very bipartisan on saying to Mr. Boat,
10:01Mr. Boat, if we say you spend $100, you spend it.
10:05Now, we've made a provision, Mr. Boat, and we're probably going to pass it, that you can come back and say, no, we think we only spend $80.
10:18And if we approve that, you can do that.
10:23But if he thinks it's a unilateral power, because he thinks the impoundment resolution is not constitutional.
10:32So I think, Mr. Chairman, we need to deal with that as a committee.
10:40As I say, he just said this, which is why I'm bringing it up today.
10:45But if we have any sense of integrity of this committee, the Constitution, and the Congress of the United States,
10:53we ought to make it very clear to Mr. Boat that we don't agree with that view.
10:58So maybe, Mr. Chairman, I'll talk to you, and maybe we can offer a resolution to that effect from this committee.
11:05And I would hope it would be bipartisan.
11:11Because if it's not, then we're just, like the Budget Committee, giving the administration a 302A,
11:18and you decide how you're going to spend it.
11:20I support the gentleman's amendment.
11:22Good job.
11:24Is there a further debate on the amendment?
11:35If not, the gentleman's recognized for one minute to close.
11:39Apparently, no one voted for vote.
11:42I encourage you to support this amendment.
11:47Questions now on the amendment offered by the gentleman from Illinois.
