Today, Congressman David Scott (GA-13) delivered the following statement during the House Financial Services Committee Full Markup hearing.
Click here to watch video of Congressman David Scott’s remarks.
Transcript of Congressman Scott's Remarks
“You know this amazing, even the American people who are perhaps watching this know that when you increase your family with more children you’re obviously going to have to increase your budget to take care of those children.
“How in the world, and let me just say Mr. Striver is a tremendous friend, I certainly support the thesis of what he is trying to do, I have worked with him before. But he is completely wrong, and Mrs. Waters is absolutely right. Nobody can question Mrs. Waters’s dedication and devotion to fighting homelessness.
“But let’s get real, and my good friend Mr. Duffy said we want to get a bipartisan bill and I do to, but we can’t put a bill forward and think you’re very serious when you say you’re expanding your category to add to the definition children and youth and you put no money there. That is absolutely wrong.
“We want a bipartisan bill, but I think we have to realize what the situation is. There are hundreds of thousands of Americans sleeping in the street in every one of our districts we see them. They’re sleeping under the viaducts. They’re sleeping in abandoned cars. Many are just sleeping there, victims of crime or victim of drugs. It is wrong for the American people to see this picture. Homelessness is a huge issue for the people of Georgia. In Atlanta alone, there are 3,000 people suffering from homelessness.
“And you know what breaks my heart so is that thousands of these people are veterans. Homelessness is growing at a faster rate of our veterans than any other group.
“Ladies and gentlemen let’s get serious with this. I want us to take the first step of bipartisanship, join with Mrs. Waters and support this bill. Now all of us were here a couple of weeks or days ago when my good friend Mr. Ben Carson came before this committee and basically said we are going to take a bulldozer to HUD’s budget, by zeroing the budget of the CBDG program – the one instrument that we have to help the poor, to help with the homelessness.
“Let’s not throw this smoke and mirrors. I urge us to get serious, very serious about homelessness, and realize that we all have passion on both the Republican and the Democratic side. But passion without money and resources to make that passion real it is just smoke and mirrors.
“Mr. Chairman, I urge you to take seriously Mrs. Waters’s amendment, which adds more money to addressing this problem. Furthermore, in addition to Ms. Waters’s amendment, we should make real reforms to our HUD programs that address homelessness and move to markup the Ranking Member’s bill, which is H.R. 2076, the End Homelessness Act.
“This is a great country. Let’s step forward and show our greatness by putting our money where our mouth is and seriously reforming these programs. I yield back the balance of my time.”
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