Ranking Member DeLauro Statement at the Full Committee Markup of the 2025 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Funding Bill
Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03), Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Committee, delivered the following remarks at the Committee's markup of the fiscal year 2025 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies funding bill:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I would like to thank Chairman Womack and Ranking Member Quigley, and the subcommittee staff on both sides of the aisle for their work on this bill, especially Christina Monroe, Jackie Kilroy, and Nora Faye.
Housing and transportation are two of the largest costs for American households. People across our districts and America are asking for sound investments that lower housing and transportation costs. Instead, this bill will raise costs for struggling American families and make it harder to build, sustain, and connect affordable, thriving communities.
Across the country, more than 650,000 people experience homelessness any given night. Despite an escalating homelessness crisis – and the Supreme Court’s shocking and cruel decision to allow localities to criminalize people experiencing homelessness – this bill guts the HOME program, the sole Federal program dedicated to affordable housing construction, by 60 percent, to levels that pre-date 1992. That translates to thousands of affordable homes that will not be built or rehabilitated, and housing opportunities stripped from thousands of renters and homebuyers.
We are facing a historic shortage of nearly 8 million affordable homes nationwide, and coupled with higher borrowing costs, housing is less affordable than ever, for homebuyers and for renters. Yet, this bill will delay livable wage construction jobs and make it more difficult to build new housing. At the same time, the bill strips eviction prevention measures for struggling families, which will inevitably drive more vulnerable people into homelessness.
The bill eliminates the Yes, In My Backyard program, which helps mayors and governors fund locally-driven solutions for land-use, affordable housing, and transit-oriented development. The bill also eliminates the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative, a neighborhood and housing revitalization program that helps communities redevelop housing and attract economic development.
And while the people of Hawaii are still recovering from devastating wildfires, this bill eliminates investments in Native Hawaiian housing and community infrastructure. That must be addressed and changed.
At every level, this bill is putting the American Dream of homeownership further out of reach for millions of people.
At the same time the bill cuts investments that keep a stable roof over families, build homes and make our communities more affordable, it reverses progress rebuilding our transportation infrastructure, making travel and commuting worse for the American people.
American families deserve safe, dependable, affordable, and world-class transportation options.
But instead of making wise investments to lower costs for families, connect our communities, and make our transportation infrastructure more resilient and reliable, the bill threatens to damage our nation’s economy, make commutes longer, cause service delays, and incite cancelations to major and desperately-needed transportation infrastructure improvement projects.
The bill cuts Amtrak funding by more than 12 percent, with over $300 million in investments stripped from the Northeast Corridor and the National Network. This forces Amtrak to make unnecessary trade-offs between cutting service and jobs, and making critical improvements to ensure travel is safe for all passengers.
Northeast Corridor rail service is the lifeblood of the $6 trillion economic region spanning 12 states from Virginia to Maine. Business travelers and commuters – myself included – rely on this service to get to work, and thousands across the region are employed, directly and indirectly, by rail service and the commerce it drives.
There are seven million jobs within a five-mile radius of a Northeast Corridor station. Communities of every size line the route, from rural towns to suburbs to urban destinations, and those communities rely heavily on rail travel for connectivity and for commerce – communities like Aberdeen, Maryland, and Roanoke, Virginia, that have stops on Amtrak’s Northeast Regional service.
Rail is one of the most critical resources in our nation’s most populous region, and the national economy will suffer if we do not make vital investments in Amtrak.
To round it out, the majority has again included poison pill riders that strip basic protection for tenants, obstruct rail development, and undermine our efforts to lower utility costs and combat climate change, instead doubling-down on greenhouse gas emissions and pollution.
Americans cannot keep up with the costs of housing and transportation, and this committee has more power than most to do something about it.
But, regrettably, the majority have chosen a path towards chaos and division, and they have put forth a bill that will make housing and transportation even more expensive for families.
We are at the table and ready to pass legislation that lowers housing and transportation costs for Americans. I implore the majority to join us. It is time to govern.
Thank you, and I yield back.
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